Death Omens

It felt like a lifetime of being surrounded by stones, waking up before dawn, getting your scope and journal, and sitting in the tall grass for hours. You'd laced up your dew-soaked boots so many times now that it felt like a part of you, like something awful would happen if you stopped doing it. The buzzards had come to see you as a perch, landing on your tattered hat each morning to search your pockets. You never shooed them away; they were the only creatures who acknowledged you now. Nobody else would notice if you went back. You still see it in your mind, like a fever. People die, but death never does after you've seen it. Just like the winged creature a mere 4 furlongs away. Death. It hasn't noticed you yet. Facing the golden haze in the distance, its milky eyes flit about nervously. You daren't breathe. A buzzard calls out from your shoulder. Death whips around, its eyes wild, and charges at you. But it stops in front of you, analyzing. Its skin hangs from its skeletal frame like an old tapestry. It rests its equine head in your hands. Death needs comfort too.